Valiant men, too, will one day
come hither and slay us as I slew that boaster, and here in Emain
Macha their bards will praise them. Then in the halls of the dead
shall we say to our sires, 'All that you got for us by your blood
and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory of the Red Branch
is at an end.'"
That speech was pleasing to the Red Branch, and they cried out
that Fergus Mac Roy had spoken well. Then all at once, on a sudden
impulse, they sang the battle-song of the Ultonians, and shouted
for the war so that the building quaked and rocked, and in the
hall of the weapons there was a clangour of falling shields, and
men died that night for extreme dread, so mightily shouted the
Ultonians around their king and around Fergus. When the echoes and
reverberations of that shout ceased to sound in the vaulted roof
and in the far recesses and galleries, then there arose somewhere
upon the night a clear chorus of treble voices, singing, too, the
war-chant of the Ultonians, as when rising out of the clangour of
brazen instruments of music there shrills forth the clear sound of
fifes.
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